MANILA — Five days after a devastating typhoon swept through the midsection of this impoverished island nation, Filipinos are losing patience with the slow relief effort, increasingly angry with their president, Benigno S. Aquino III, a popular figure who has until now navigated multiple crises during his three years in office.

The heir to a political dynasty, Mr. Aquino, 53, is facing the biggest challenge of his presidency, and even allies say he appears to have been caught off guard by the scope of the crisis. “He has to move fast, otherwise this will engulf him,” said Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, a veteran politician.

Although planes have begun arriving with badly needed supplies, much of the aid remains undistributed because of impassable roads, a dearth of working vehicles and inadequate access to fuel.

“The situation is catastrophic; it’s total chaos,” Dr. Natasha Reyes, the Philippines emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement.

Mr. Aquino flew to the devastated city of Tacloban on Sunday, but his public statements have struck some as insensitive. He lashed out at looters and seemed to criticize local officials for their initial failure to help the living and count the dead. Some critics say he has held fast to national pride rather than issue forceful appeals for international assistance.

During a meeting with officials in Tacloban, the president expressed annoyance at his top disaster management official and grew peevish when a local business owner complained of being held up at gunpoint by looters. “But you did not die, right?” Mr. Aquino snapped, according to local news media reports, shortly before presidential guards ushered the man out of the room.

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Filipinos displaced by the typhoon took shelter Wednesday at the Capitol building in Tacloban.CreditJes Aznar for The New York Times

On Tuesday, Mr. Aquino played down reports that the death toll could exceed 10,000, suggesting 2,000 might be more realistic. In an interview with CNN, he attributed the larger figure to the “emotional trauma” experienced by those providing the estimates.

Ramon C. Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform in Manila, said the debate over casualty figures was becoming an unnecessary distraction. “I don’t believe the lower figures put out by officials, but if the number turns out to be greater, you’re going to have a political backlash,” he said.

A columnist for The Manila Times, Ben D. Kritz, ridiculed top officials, among them the nation’s defense secretary, for flying to the disaster zone without working phones. He noted that one of the first military planes to land was carrying a van — which could not be used on Leyte Island’s debris-clogged roads. “In the aftermath of the typhoon, the response of the Aquino administration, as usual, has been an uncoordinated, fumbling embarrassment,” he wrote.

The president’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Until now Mr. Aquino, popularly referred to as Noynoy, had a remarkably smooth tenure as the leader of nation long derided as “the sick man of Asia.” The son of former president Corazon C. Aquino and Benigno S. Aquino Jr., a beloved political figure who was assassinated in 1983, Mr. Aquino has earned high marks by taking on the endemic corruption that has long bedeviled the Philippines. Among his most notable achievements was a landmark peace accord with the nation’s largest group of Muslim separatists that had evaded his predecessors.

Since his election in 2010, the economy has been expanding at a heady pace, with 7.6 percent growth during the first half of the year. His administration has bolstered tax collection and has helped fuel increased spending on infrastructure, social welfare and disaster preparation.

But few would deny that Mr. Aquino has been dealt a difficult hand in recent months. In September, the government was caught off guard after a splinter group of Muslim insurgents seized a city in the south, prompting a battle with the army that left more than 200 people dead and destroyed 10,000 homes. There have also been back-to-back natural disasters, including an earthquake last month that killed more than 200 people on Bohol, an island that was battered again last week by Typhoon Haiyan. Last year, Typhoon Bopha killed more than 1,100 people in the southern island of Mindanao, causing $900 million in damage.

Then there is an unfolding corruption scandal involving more than $200 million in public money that ended up in the pockets of elected officials, and a businesswoman accused of setting up fake nongovernmental organizations. Investigators said some of those funds had been earmarked for flood prevention and projects that would have rehoused vulnerable residents living in storm-prone coastal areas.

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“We’re already a country under siege by nature, and we have no money to spend on disaster preparation because all our high officials are stealing from us,” said Senator Santiago, who conducted televised hearings on the scandal last week that transfixed the nation just as the storm was approaching.

For the moment, however, all eyes are focused on Mr. Aquino and his administration’s response to the latest natural calamity. That effort will require him to navigate the clannish politics of a region traditionally loyal to the Marcos family, including Imelda Marcos, 84, the wife of former President Ferdinand Marcos who is a member of the House of Representatives.

Initial estimates put the devastation at $14 billion, an enormous sum for a country with a gross domestic product of $250 billion, and where a quarter of all residents live on less than $1.25 a day. Mars S. Buan, a senior analyst at Pacific Strategies and Assessments, said Typhoon Haiyan and the earthquake that struck Bohol last month would probably depress economic output by 5 percent in the final quarter of 2013. “No one was prepared for this kind of disaster,” she said.

Although Ms. Buan and other analysts credit the Aquino administration for increased spending on disaster preparation, there are some who say the nation has to do a better job planning for storms, especially if the predictions of some climate scientists — who warn of increasingly powerful storms fueled by warming seas — prove correct.

Having been warned days in advance about the route and strength of the typhoon, some critics say the government should have evacuated residents from coastal areas, noting India’s successful evacuation last month of more than 800,000 people in the path of Cyclone Phailin. In the end, only a few dozen deaths were reported.

Benito Lim, a political analyst at Ateneo de Manila University, said the Philippine government had long been focused on short-term relief rather than long-range planning.

“The government thinks it’s enough to give out packages of noodles, cans of sardines and rice,” he said. “The problem is that suffering by the poor has become a normal thing in the Philippines.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Philippines’ President Faces Growing Anger. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe